Tax Subsidies Repeal

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss gas prices. Gas prices have doubled under this President, so today this body will consider new legislation which the other side, I assume, thinks will make the situation better. But their solution is to raise taxes on oil companies--raise taxes by $25 billion.

Any of you who have a business know when we raise taxes on a business, it simply is a cost to doing business. When your costs increase for making your product, what do you do? You charge your consumer more.

So I am not sure what person is advising the other side, but I do not quite understand how raising $25 billion worth of cost on the oil industry is going to help gas prices. In fact, I think it is going to send gas prices even higher.

Some on the other side say: Oh, this is a matter of fairness; everybody needs to pay their fair share. Well, oil companies actually pay $86 million a day in taxes. In the last 10 years the oil companies have paid over $100 billion in taxes. And the people who say, well, we must punish them; they are making too much money; let's punish them, well, the oil companies employ 9.2 million people. They are 8 percent of our GDP. Do we want to punish the people who are creating jobs, the people who are trying to make us energy independent in our country? It makes absolutely no sense.

Some will argue, well, we need to make the Tax Code fair, and the oil companies have special exemptions. Well, guess what. These exemptions and business deductions apply to other businesses. But they just want to take them away from one of our successful industries. It seems to me, if an industry is successful and creates 9.2 million jobs, instead of punishing them we should want to encourage them. I would think we would want to say to the oil companies: What obstacles are there to you making more money and hiring more people? Instead they say: No, we must punish them. We must tax them more to make things fair.

This whole debate about fairness is so misguided and it has gotten out of hand. The rich in our society do pay the vast majority of our taxes. Do not let them tell you otherwise. Those who make over $200,000 a year pay 70 percent of the income tax. Those who make more than $70,000 a year pay about 96 percent of the income tax. And 47 percent of our public do not pay an income tax. So those who are saying the rich are not paying their fair share are trying to use envy and class warfare to get people stirred up. But it makes absolutely no sense.

We as a society need to glorify those who make a profit and those who employ people. We need to encourage more business in this country. The oil companies employ 9.2 million people. We do not need to heap punishment on them. We need to give them encouragement to employ more people.

I will have two amendments to this bill that I think would actually make it better. While the President talks about people not paying their fair share, he is actually giving more than their fair share to his friends. I do not think the government should be used as a loan agency to give money to contributors. This is unseemly. I think the conflict of interest is undeniable.

We have companies such as Solyndra. This is a company that received $500 million of your money and went bankrupt. It just so happened that the owner of the company is the 20th richest man in the United States and a big donor of the President. It just so happens that this company, Solyndra, the person who approved their loan was related, was the husband, of a woman who worked for Solyndra.

Another company, a company called BrightSource out of Massachusetts, is owned by a member of the Kennedy family. They got $1.8 billion. Guess who approved their loan. A guy who used to work for the Kennedys who is now in President Obama's administration. It does not pass the smell test. What we have is crony capitalism or crony governmentalism where the government is picking out their friends and giving money to their friends.

So we come here today to raise taxes on Big Oil. Meanwhile, we are giving money to millionaires and billionaires, and it does not seem right that your tax dollars should be sent to companies simply because they were big contributors.

Another company, Fisker Karma, got $500 million supposedly to make an electric car in the United States. Guess where they are making it. In Finland. We sent money to Solyndra through international banks, through the Ex-Im Bank. We sent money to First Solar through the Ex-Im Bank. Do you know what their money was for? Their money was given to them so they could buy their own products. The company bought a subsidiary in Canada. We gave money to the company in the United States and let them buy their own products with your money. It makes absolutely no sense. So I have two proposals.

One amendment to this bill would say. Look, if you think some companies are getting unfair deductions, let's get rid of all deductions. Let's just have a flat tax. Let's make the corporate income tax 17 percent. Currently it is 35 percent.

So if we want to encourage business, if we want to encourage employment, lower taxes; do not raise taxes. Canada has an income tax for their corporations of 17 percent. Most of Europe is in the low 20s, and we are at 35 percent. We wonder why we cannot get business started in this country. We wonder why there is billions, even trillions of dollars, left overseas that will not come home because we want to charge them a 35-percent tax when it comes home.

Our bill would also say: If you have already paid taxes overseas once, you do not have to pay again when you come home. So a 17-percent flat tax. We would see a boom in this country like we have not seen in a generation. We would see millions of jobs being created if we would just learn the basic facts of economics. If we punish a company, we will have less jobs. If we encourage a company by giving them more tax breaks, we will have more jobs. Taxes are a cost.

If this bill passes, not only will our gas prices continue to rise--they have already doubled--but we will see our gas prices going through the roof. But then again there are people in this administration who do not even drive a car. They do not understand the price of gas because they do not have to drive a car. Someone picks them up in a limousine. The thing is, they need to go to the pump. They need to see how much we are spending on gas.

They need to see what they are doing to this country and what they are doing to the job market.

I have a second amendment to this bill that would take all of this money, all of these loans they are giving to their buddies--the Solyndra loans, the Fisker Karma loans, the First Solar loan--all of this money that is being dispensed to people who are large contributors of the President, we would take that loan program and eliminate it. When we eliminate that loan program, we would save nearly $30 billion. The GAO has said as much as $6 billion is at risk for loss now. If we were to eliminate that money, we could put half toward the debt and then put half toward rebuilding our infrastructure.

The President says he wants to rebuild our bridges. He came to my State. I stood on a bridge with him and said I would help. But the way to help is by not passing out dollars to friends that are being lost by the billions of dollars. We cannot simply create the money; let's find the money.

So I propose to end the Department of Energy loans and take that money, put half of it against the debt, and put half of that into repairing or replacing our bridges. This is how government should work. We should pick priorities. There is not an unlimited amount of money. So let's take it from an area where it is prone to corruption and where it is prone to a conflict of interest--these alternative energy loans that seem to be going mostly to the President's friends and political campaign contributors, let's take that money and use it to repair the bridges and to pay down the debt. This is what responsible government should do. But what we are doing in this body, what will happen in the next 24 hours as we discuss this bill is--and everybody in America needs to be very clear about this--when they go to the gas pump and pay more every day for gasoline, they need to realize where the responsibility lies.

The responsibility lies with those who are running up the debt, and as we pay for the debt we print new money. So gas prices rising means the value of the dollar is shrinking. That is why prices are rising. We need to realize who is to blame for the gas prices. It is those who are running up the debt. But we also have to realize it is even worse than that. It is not just the running up of the debt, we have to realize these people today now want to add $25 billion to the gas prices. That is what happens.

When we raise the taxes on the oil companies we will add $25 billion in taxes, but we will increase their cost by $25 billion. Any business that sells products simply passes that on to the consumer.

So what we are here about--and they should retitle their bill--since they are willing to, by this legislation, increase gas prices, it should be called ``the bill to raise your gas prices.''

So what I would ask this body to do is to consider two amendments that would actually lower the debt and take money away from crony capitalism and another one that would reform the Tax Code to eliminate deductions and discrepancies within the Tax Code, but to do it by lowering the tax rate, flattening the tax rate, and allowing businesses to succeed in our country.

It gets down to whom do you want to represent you in Washington, DC? Do you want a party that basically wants to punish business, those who are creating jobs, or do you want a party that wants to encourage business?

We are in the midst of a great recession. Until we understand this fundamental fact, we are not going to recover as a nation.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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